History : France

French manners and civility were the model for European civilization, while feud is associated with backward societies. Yet in France thousands of men died in duels in which the supposed rules of honour were regularly flouted. In this detailed and original book Stuart Carroll explores the nature of vengeance and reveals the dark side of Renaissance civilization. - ;The rise of civilized conduct and behaviour has long been seen as one of the major factors in the transformation from medieval to modern society. Thinkers and historians alike argue that violence progressively declined as men learned to control their emotions. The feud is a phenomenon associated with backward societies, and in the West duelling codified behaviour and channelled aggression into ritualised combats that satisfied honour without the shedding of blood. French manners and. codes of civility laid the foundations of civilized Western values. But as this original work of archival research shows we continue to romanticize violence in the era of the swashbuckling swordsman. In France, thousands of men died in duels in which the rules of the game were regularly flouted. Many duels were in fact mini-battles and must be seen not as a replacement of the blood feud, but as a continuation of vengeance-taking in a much bloodier form. This book outlines the nature of feuding in France and its intensification in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, civil war and dynastic weakness, and considers the solutions proposed by thinkers from Montaigne to Hobbes. The creation of the largest standing army in Europe since the Romans was one such solution, but the. militarization of society, a model adopted throughout Europe, reveals the darker side of the civilizing process. - ;...this book will force early modern French historians to rethink the categories that we have been using concerning both violence and the nobility, and it will force some of us also to stop relying on prescriptive sources as a substitute for more...

Price: $182.50

This collection gathers many of the best-known names in the field of Anglo-French relations and provides an authoritative survey of the field. Starting with the crucial period of the First World War and ending with the equally complex question of the second Iraq War, the study has an emphasis on British perceptions of the Entente. more...

Price: $74.95

This study challenges the conventional polarities used to describe British politics of the 1790s; Pitt versus Fox, Burke versus Paine, Church versus Dissent, ruling class versus working class, Jacobin versus anti-Jacobin. Such polarities were sedulously promoted by Pitt's wartime government, which applied 'Jacobin' shamelessly to all its critics and opponents, and thus foreshadowed the McCarthyite tactic of guilt by association. The author seeks to make the less strident but more persuasive contemporary voices again audible. He takes seriously those who questioned the necessity for Burke's crusade to destroy the French republic, and who deplored Britain's alliance with the partitioners of Poland. more...

Price: $99.00

Two years ago, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina inspired emotional elegies to the long and colorful history of New Orleans. But until now, the story of French New Orleans has remained largely untold. Building the Devil’s Empire is the first comprehensive history of the city’s early years, tracing the town’s development from its origins in 1718 as an imperial experiment in urban planning through its revolt against Spanish rule in 1768. Shannon Lee Dawdy’s picaresque account of New Orleans’s wild youth features a cast of strong-willed captives, thin-skinned nobles, sharp-tongued women, and carousing travelers, as well as the sounds and smells that created the texture of everyday life there. During the French period, the city earned its reputation as the devil’s town, where laws were lax and pleasures abundant. Though New Orleans’s roguish character is sometimes exaggerated, Dawdy traces its early roots in the city’s political independence, active smuggling rings, and peculiar demographics—a diverse mix of Africans, Indians, Europeans, and Creoles all involved in the contentious process of building a new society. Dawdy also widens her lens to reveal the port city’s global significance, examining its role in the French Empire and the Caribbean, and she concludes that by exemplifying a kind of rogue colonialism—where governments, outlaws, and capitalism become entwined—New Orleans should prompt us to reconsider our notions of how colonialism works. By the end of the French period, New Orleans was one of the most modern—and most American—towns in the New World. As the city enters a new phase in its history, Building the Devil’s Empire paints a rich and thoughtful portrait of its founding. more...

Price: $22.50

One of the key objectives of British forces on D-Day was the capture of the strategically vital city of Caen. General Montgomery saw Caen as the key to Normandy and the springboard for the Allied breakout, but so did the Germans and the city did not fall. It took three major offensives and more than 30 bloody days of struggle to finally take Caen. In the process the city was controversially devastated and its civilian population decimated. The Allies paid a high price for Caen but the horrific German casualties bled their forces in Normandy white and helped open the way for the American breakout in Operation Cobra. more...

Price: $19.95